In theory the plugin is fantastic. The people who comment the most on your posts get a link on the sidebar, or where ever you place the PHP. The link is not rel=”nofollow” ed, so it’s more beneficial (for rankings) than the regular comment links that do have the nofollow attribute on them.

Ideally people would use their real name so that you could actually start to form a relationship and community on your blog. Sadly that never happened. It’s almost impossible to establish a relationship with your keyword.

So at the end of the day, I decided to remove the plugin because I felt it was bringing down the quality of commentors and links.

Sorry to all the good commentors that had to get penalized for A LOT of bad apples.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Starting with @font-face over at mezzoblue goes into detail and explains the @font-face method as well as other font embedding options and gives some good links if you need to investigate further.

Check out his post to learn all about using @font-face.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Content Strategy

Content strategy is such a huge part of any website and sadly it seems like it is often overlooked. Listening/watching to the live feed from A Event Apart Chicago conference going on this past week, much of the topics I caught were on content strategy.

Here’s a snippet from Kristina Halvorson’s Content First

Results from good content strategy: better user experience, greater brand consistency, new operational efficiencies, better risk management, improved SEO, more personalization and targeting.

Here’s a summary of some of presentations at An Event Apart Chicago.

More posts on content strategy from around the web:

• Content Strategy: planning a site pt.2
• Doing a Content Inventory (Or, A Mind-Numbingly Detailed Odyssey Through Your Web Site)
• Content Analysis Heuristics
• Brain Traffic Blog

Typography

I enjoy reading about typography for the web. When I started designing websites it was all about Photoshop and how many bevels and glows I could put on everything. As the years have gone by, I’ve started to care more about search engine optimization which has in turn led my interests more towards content. With a greater appreciation for content strategy (see above) and formatting my evolution has guided me back to typography. It’s easy to throw some type on the page, but to make one font for the entire site look sexy is quite a different story.

Information Architects gave me an incredible amount of inspiration this week, everything from their design point of view to their method of business. The post that really caught my eye was Web Design is 95% Typography (not the real title, but you’ll have to read it to find out) as well as the follow up post, Reactions to 95% Typography.

If you don’t want to take the time to see how this font looks next to that font let TypeTester do it for you. Typetester is a great tool that allows you to look at a lot of different font variations on the fly and whenever I feel lazy with CSS I instantly visit that site.

Seen any other good links on content strategy or typography? Post them in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: content strategy, typography, An Event Apart, aea

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Above is a little Sunday jam session with John King on guitar and yours truly on the drums.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Snook.ca wrote up an exciting post on Text Rotation with CSS and explained exactly how you accomplish this task and make it work across multiple browsers (Safari, Firefox and even Internet Explorer).

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

I build out sites for a lot of different companies and whenever I have to build out a site that I didn’t personally design I always run across something that makes me think twice about a certain CSS method.

Today I stumbled (not literally) onto Mega CSS Resource Roundup and I have to say I am very impressed. Here’s a quick list of some of the things the resource included:

1. CSS for beginers
2. CSS cheat sheets
3. CSS shorthand cheat sheets
4. CSS reference guides
5. XHTML cheat sheets
6. HTML cheat sheets
7. HTML5 cheat sheets
8. Character entity cheat sheets
9. RGB and HEX color cheat sheets
10. Creating CSS layouts from scratch
11. CSS tricks (beginners)
12. CSS tricks (advanced)
13. CSS organization
14. CSS cross browser techniques
15. Free CSS templates
16. CSS positioning guides
17. CSS and forms
18. CSS typography tips
19. CSS graphs
20. CSS bar charts
21. CSS line graphs
22. CSS rounded corners
23. CSS pull quotes
24. CSS lists
25. CSS print page tricks
26. CSS grid frameworks
27. CSS 3 resources
28. Vertical CSS menus
29. Horizontal CSS menus
30. CSS menus with flyouts
31. CSS menus with drop-downs (a ton of menu and nav links)
32. CSS clean up
33. CSS creator tools

In the future if you ever have any CSS questions or are looking to do something new and creative you have to check out the Mega CSS Resources Roundup over at Tripwire Magazine.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

For example: Using “Free Quote” instead of “Submit” on your contact form can drastically increase click thrus.

I’ve recently added Google’s Website Optimizer to a new design that I’m trying out to determine if it’s going to get the results I’m after.

Blastam has a great write-up on the Top 50 Google Website Optimizer Tips on What to Test that will give you a ton of info on how and what to get started on.

Check out the post and start testing your site.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

But once again the Wordpress community is REALLY on top of things. By the time I changed quite a few settings and added a bunch of security plugins, this 2.8.4 Security Release came out.

My faith in Wordpress has been restored, but to every WP user UPDATE NOW. My password got changed about 50 times in a few hours. Incredibly annoying.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Plan A

I was planning on launching my new site on January 1st, but as you can tell that didn’t happen. I was fortunate enough to hook up with another local company here in Greenville that needed a pretty regular front-end developer, so I am glad to say that the re-design didn’t get launched because I was incredibly busy.

Plan B

In lieu of launching the entire site, I then decided to launch just the sub pages. Basically all the pages except the blog. The blog brought on a whole set of extra development hours that I thought would slow down the launch even more. I lived with that thought in my head for about four months continuing to be exceptionally busy with more website development projects.

Plan C

Now that we’re eight months into 2009 and I still haven’t found the time to launch the new design I have decided to just launch a single page at a time. Below is a screenshot of the new page but feel free to check it out in action.

I’d like to setup some testing between the new and old page with Google’s Website Optimizer, but if you have any feedback, I would love to hear it. Put them in the comments below.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Vandelay Design put together 9 Things to Understand About a Client When Starting a Design Project.

Overall the list is a great set of questions to keep on hand for any designer who is either just starting out or is still getting the hang of the freelance process which can often times be overwhelming.

I particularly like number 7) The Determining Factors of Failure or Success for the Project. This factor is so often overlooked because everyone is so excited to get started. Once the site is live, its a little late to think about what factors would make it a success or failure.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Wireframes are a fantastic way to make sure the content is getting the focus it deserves before you ever throw any graphics on top of it.

If your not familiar with wireframes check out this post which goes into detail about why you want to use them and also a few tools that can make it easier for you.

The Importance Of Wireframes In Web Design And 9 Tools To Create Wireframes

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

With CMS (content management system) frameworks popping up everywhere and blog platforms making it as easy as 1,2,3 for practically anybody to have an online presence, consumers need to be aware that not all website development is the same.

The accessibility of your website and the semantics of the (HTML/XHTML) markup can make or break your search engine exposure.

What is an accessible website?

The accessibility of your website has to do with the way it appears to both the search engines and your users. If you are using older technologies like frames for your website development, then bots or search engine crawlers are not able to index your content at all because they can’t see what’s inside a frame.

Frames aren’t really used too much these days, but their slightly newer counterpart tables are still very rampant on the internet. Tables can be ok, but depending on how complicated your layout becomes, bots can have problems indexing multiple nested tables.

There are a whole assortment of technologies and methods that can inhibit your site’s exposure and it’s important to get involved with a website development firm that knows their way around accessibility.

Accessibility Scenarios

Example 1

Let’s say your company relies on local search engine traffic and you offer coupons online for more incentive. If your address and pertinent company info happens to be in a deeply nested table then that info is going to have a hard time getting indexed.

If I need your services, but have no idea your company exists, then searching for you online becomes incredibly hard because of this outdated development method.

Example 2

Let’s say you just had a brand new site developed with all the latest cutting edge features, super-smooth accordions that gracefully open and close, creating eye candy up the wazoo with AJAX-y goodness.

But, bots and crawlers don’t have javascript enabled so it’s impossible for them to index your content. Your brand new site is now inaccessible.

Example 3

The document outline is a quick indicator of the content structure of your web page. You can find the document outline of any web page with the help of the web developer toolbar for Firefox.

Ideally your document outline should represent a well thought-out outline. The document outline is derived from the markup and structure you use for your website.

Bad HTML markup = bad document outline

The image above shows both the way the site looks to users as well as the document outline used by the search engines. As you can see to a regular user, everything looks fine, but the information given to search engines in the document outline has no value at all.

Good HTML markup = good document outline

This image represents a good outline to both users and search engines. The development of this site is the best that it can be. While the actual content on the page may need updated over time, the structure and code are set for years.

If your document outline is out of whack; or worse, non-existent, then your site is going to have trouble getting good rankings.

Accessible websites that are built with web standards are few and far between these days. More developers are becoming aware of these techniques but it’s the consumers who need to be knowledgeable.

No matter what you pay for your website, wouldn’t you like people to find it on the search engines?

Have you run into other situations where your site has had trouble getting indexed and crawled? Let me know in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: website development, web standards, semantic markup

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Here’s a quick look at the sections of the guide:

1. Introduction: Setup
2. The Site Overlay Report
3. Visitors: Map Overlay
4. Content: Top Content
5. Ecommerce: Overview
6. Content: Site Search
7. Identifying and Setting up Goals
8. Goals and Funnel Visualization Report
9. Traffic Sources: All Traffic Sources
10. Traffic Sources: AdWords
11. Tracking Error 404 Pages and Broken Links
12. Tracking Slow Loading Times

Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Browser Shots is the tool for you. A free service that allows you to review your site in dozens and dozens of different browsers and specific versions of each browser.

Next time you need to test the way your site looks across the board, go to Browser Shots.

Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test – Browsershots

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

To tell you honestly, from that day onwards, I have been in a habit of observing logo designs of various companies on all such occasions and enjoy the way they play with it according to the occasion. So let me share the ones I have come across by Google, Yahoo!, AOL, YouTube, ASK and Orkut! on different days and events.

Earth Day Logos

Earth day is celebrated all across the world on the 22nd of April every year. It is a day dedicated to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. With respect to that, companies like Google, Yahoo!, AOL, ASK come up with creatively designed logos to display on their websites every year.

Google has been doing this since 2001, with their first Google doodle celebrating Earth day which looked like this:

I was greatly amused to see how Google replaced the alphabet ‘O’ with ‘earth’ to depict this day very clearly. It was simple though and the fact that they stuck to their basic logo design and colors, yet it explained very well that its Earth day. Google doodles, are however, always static unlike other companies, who design flashy animated logos on such events and occasions.

In 2007, Google designed yet another logo for earth day, which too was very impactful:

The above logo by Google on earth day depicted a melting iceberg. This logo was found to be the best amongst the two other logos created by Yahoo! and Ask.

Later on, in 2008, Denis Hwang , the doodler behind all those Google doodles created a very serene logo depicted Earth day.

This logo by Google was indeed very refreshing and amazingly done. The serene environment created to form the best possible logo for earth day with rocks, greenery, waterfall, tortoise and mountains, all put together to craft this imaginative logo. I was literally fascinated and enthralled after seeing this logo.

Similarly, Yahoo! came up with a logo on Earth day which was different in a way that it wasn’t static, but animated. Yahoo! designed different logos customized for different countries for this day. The one shown right below is for Taiwan. Yahoo! customized the logo by incorporating ‘Earth day’ written in Taiwan’s own dialect. They created an Earth day environment by showing lamp, fan and earth etc. The concept however was very cool, they showed that it’s better to consume less energy and produce less heat to save the earth.

In 2007, Yahoo! also came up with a logo specially designed for earth day. In this logo, they converted their exclamation mark (!) into an energy saving light bulb which was powered by the windmill created with the letter ‘Y’. It was an attractive logo, yet Google took all the applause for its iceberg logo.

Later in 2008, Yahoo! designed an earth day logo which was animated and all green. This logo was very simple, yet it conveyed the message very clearly through its design concept.

However, in the same year Ask also came up with a logo designed for earth day but it didn’t leave a strong impression since it wasn’t well designed and changed much according to the day.

AOL too took part in this race of logo embellishing and came up with this:

It was a good effort by AOL but can’t be compared with Google.

Halloween Logos

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints’ Day. It is largely a secular celebration, but some Christians and pagans have expressed strong feelings about its religious overtones.

Let’s start with Google, how in 2007, they came up with such a fascinating logo:

It was great to see such a beautifully designed logo; it had all the elements that could best possibly define Halloween.

Similarly, yahoo! in the same year designed an animated logo for that holiday with real skeletons haunted by made up spooky skeletons. It was really a good effort.

In 2007, AOL designed a special Halloween logo by putting in a special Halloween pumpkin. Though, the entire logo wasn’t changed much.

Father’s Day Logos

Father’s Day is a day honoring fathers, celebrated on various days in many places around the world. See how Google and Yahoo! celebrated it with sheer enthusiasm and zeal through their logos.

Valentine’s Day Logos

According to Wikipedia, Valentine’s Day or Saint Valentine’s Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine’s cards, presenting flowers, or offering confectionery.

Have a look at how Google, Yahoo!, Orkut, YouTube and AOL have designed their logos just to give it a Valentine touch.

In this one, Google simply embellished the logo with a bunch of roses and a ribbon with rose petals on it. The rest of the logo was as it is.

This Valentine logo was made by Yahoo! especially for its Japanese website with hearts, angel and lovers.

Orkut made a simple yet cute looking logo on Valentine’s. It changed the font type and the colors especially for this day with it’s ‘O’ converted to a heart with an arrow.

YouTube simply added a rose to its existing logo on Valentine’s Day.

AOL changed the color of its existing logo and added roses in it to give it a Valentine’s Day look.

This was all from my side for now. However, I will definitely find more and share them with you. My point to share this with you is to let you know the importance of giving your logo the look according to special days, events and occasions in order to increase the visibility and the importance of it. As you have already see, internet giants like Google, Yahoo, AOL, so on and so forth had taken this initiative way back and now their logos are known for their creativity and uniqueness on different days. Let me know, how do you like the post and do share with us, the logo designs specially designed on different occasions. It would be great to see if you are a business owner and you have designed your logo especially on any occasion. Our comments section awaits your feedback.

This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Here you can watch designers go head to head battling on the holy grounds of photoshop and illustrator.

They have matches every week so be sure and check’em out. Always a good source of inspiration.

Check out some Layer Tennis.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Social media is all about getting involved with other members of the community and interacting with them. Whether you’re a cyclist, fortune 500 CEO, or candle maker…social media has a place for you.

The confusion comes when people don’t know how to optimize their social media campaign. Remember that, in the vast majority of situations, the main purpose of social media is to drive traffic back to your website, not your twitter account.

I see a lot of people add their twitter and facebook accounts to email signatures and link from one social media account to another, but they never mention their own website. If I’m on your facebook page, I don’t want to have to go to your twitter account to try and find the link to your website that may or may not even be there. You’re asking a lot of me, and the chances that I’m going to continue hunting for your links gets slimmer the more places you send me.

Businesses spend a lot of time creating products, writing content, and developing websites. At the end of the day we hope that people visit our work and possibly talk about it. It’s important to make sure that while we’re getting caught up in the excitement of social media, we’re also keeping in mind that the goal is to send traffic back to our sites.

So keep tweeting all day and friending everyone you know on facebook, but make sure you’re making the most of these opportunities by continuing to communicate about the new content or unique features on your website.

If you’d like to see how I use twitter and facebook as part of a comprehensive online strategy, please feel free to follow me @DrewStauffer or friend me on facebook.

What are some other ways you use social media for the benefit of your business? Let me know in the comments below.

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Take a look at a few of these easy examples and learn how to bring depth and detail into your next website.

I have been using these techniques for many years and their all super simple. Once you incorporate them into your arsenal you’ll wonder how you ever designed a site without them.

5 Pixel Popping Techniques

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Avinash Kaushik from Google goes over some easy ways to look at your website’s analytics and immediately discover which pages are causing your bounce rate to increase.

Once you know which pages are bringing you down, you can adjust your campaign accordingly.

How to Analyze and Improve Bounce Rates

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .

Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet

This is a post from Alibi Productions. If you'd like to get more try subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter .